How and why to achieve Inbox Zero
A misunderstood concept that holds amazing promise for academics
In my last article, I presented a Grand Unified Theory of Academic Email. I had a particular agenda in mind then, because I want to discuss a topic today that a lot of academics feel is either objectionable or impossible or both, and that is the idea of Inbox Zero.
You see, there's no reason to have a highly detailed Clarify process that connects GTD methodology to your higher horizons and principles and to the Law of the Whole Person and everything else, if you just end up thinking about your unread emails all the time anyway. The concept of Inbox Zero addresses the real goal of all these processes, and today I wanted to explain what I think the idea means, why it’s both possible and desirable for academics, and of course how to actually go about getting there.
What is Inbox Zero?
You might have heard of Inbox Zero before, and I've blogged about it here before. It is a misunderstood concept. There are at least three different ways to conceptualize it.
Perhaps the most common is that Inbox Zero is the state where there are literally no emails sitting in your inbox. I mean, the term does say “Inbox Zero”, so it’s understandable why people would think this. And maybe in the early days when this term was first coined, that was the intent. But I don’t think this is the right way to think about it, for reasons I’ll explain later.
Another conception of Inbox Zero is that it is a productivity system or method, whose aim is to achieve the literally-empty-inbox state above. You will see a lot of people talk about “using the Inbox Zero method” for example. Productivity guru Merlin Mann first coined the notion of Inbox Zero in a Google Tech Talk back in 2007:
In this talk, Mann defines Inbox Zero as a system, where email is treated as a medium or “tube” for getting things from one place to another, and The “Inbox Zero method” is a framework of rules for processing all emails every time you check your email — that is, looking at every email, deciding what it means to you, and either taking action immediately or putting the appropriate next action on a list. This may sound familiar. And, in this method, the desired end state is a literally empty inbox.
I don’t think that the literally-empty-inbox interpretation of the term Inbox Zero works is the right one to use in today’s world because it neither reflects the complexity of our current digital world, nor is it very realistic. Merlin Mann was thinking of a world in which everybody had one inbox: Their email, and only one account to tend to. Today, however, most professionals have multiple email accounts, as well as multiple places where stuff is captured and accumulated1. And when you think about the number of inboxes we have, and the frequency with which stuff comes into those inboxes, getting them to literally zero on a regular basis becomes a never-ending stress factory. We often end up not actually getting anything done because we're constantly processing inboxes to zero.
And this is why I think the third conception of inbox zero is the one that we should focus on: It is the state in which you are giving no attention to your inboxes unless you want to. In other words, the “zero” in Inbox Zero refers to an amount of time and attention, not a number on an unread message count.
So in a state of Inbox Zero, your emails and other items from different inboxes fall into one of two categories: First, there are the ones you have processed, determined what they mean and how they should be handled, and then removed from your inbox to put them in the right place — and therefore there’s zero attention you need to spend on them. And second, there are the ones that you haven’t processed yet but you know you will do so soon — and therefore there’s zero attention you need to spend on them.
As I sit here writing this article, I keep my email completely shut off so I can focus. So I have no idea right now how many emails are sitting in my inbox. But I also know that I process my email thoroughly three times a day, at fixed times of the day, so whatever may be sitting in my inbox right now, I know I will get to it within a few hours — and so I don't need to think about any of it right now. I’ll get to them when I get to them, which is not long from now.
What really makes the difference here is review. There can be times during your day — for me it's once in the morning, once at lunchtime, and once in the afternoon as I'm shutting down — where I am going to give laser-like attention to the items in my inboxes. And during those sprints, I am going to try to process every item in every inbox until I know what it means and I put it in the right place. But outside those review periods, I am not going to think at all about the items in my inbox because, I know I'm going to give them my full attention later on pretty soon.
In other words, I am definitely going to give attention to my inboxes, but it’s intentional attention – attention at a time and place of my choosing — and not unintentional attention which takes the form of intrusive thoughts about what may or may not be in an email or some other inbox item, occurring during a time when I need my full attention on something else like a student or a phone call or a blog post. Viewed this way, you could summarize “Inbox Zero” as zero unintentional attention.
This is a powerful idea for academics. How often are we engaged in some kind of important task or interaction, only to have our presence broken up by a random thought about an unread message or unfulfilled obligation? Wouldn’t it be great to be free from that?
How to get to Inbox Zero and stay there
I’m going to skip to the part about how to actually make this happen. A lot of the process I'm about to describe is just stuff that I've already posted about here. Once I pull all of it together, then I’ll discuss some of the issues with it.
First, there is a bit of infrastructure you’ll need to set up first:
You will need five lists in physical or digital files: Someday/Maybe, Next Actions, Waiting For, Projects, and Agendas.
You will need folders to store reference materials. You can make these up as you go and arrange them however you like, but I like the PARA framework where every email and storage uses the same four top-level folders: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive.
You will need a calendar.
With those set up, do the following:
Make a list of all the inboxes you have. Again, this includes individual email inboxes and any other place where “stuff” has been captured.
In each inbox, start at the very top of the inbox and pick off the item that is at the top. Don't skip around and look for things that look easy to process. Start at the top.
Take that item and apply the Clarify flowchart for academics that you will find in this post to determine what it means to you and where it belongs. As a reminder, the flowchart leads you through a series of questions about whether the item is actionable, whether it will take less than two minutes, and so forth. In the end, every item ends up in a particular place that matches its meaning: the trash, possibly, or an email folder, or the Someday/Maybe list, and so on. Or it could be an item that is simply done on the spot because it’s actionable and takes less than 2 minutes to complete.
Once the item has been clarified, remove it from the inbox — either delete it, or move it to an appropriate folder, but get it out of the inbox. Otherwise, the Zeigarnik Effect kicks in, which I’ll describe in a minute.
Continue on to the next item that was second from the top.
Continue this process until you reach the bottom, and then there are no more emails in the inbox. If there were emails that came into your inbox during this process, loop back around to the top and start over. And continue this until there is literally nothing there.
Move to the next inbox and repeat steps two through six.
I know this may sound like an insane amount of work. If you have a massively untended inbox with thousands of unprocessed emails, it is a lot of work. You may need to clear your calendar for a weekend, or an entire Fall Break, to get through everything2. But note three things. First, the more you build this process as a habit, the faster you get with it. Second, it’s much easier to keep your inbox at or near zero than it is to get there in the first place, so the first time will always be the hardest. Third, I think this kind of work, while hard, is necessary if you want to be truly intentional about life and work in academia. You simply can't have unprocessed emails hanging around and expect to have your full attention placed where it needs to be, when it needs to be.
Staying at Inbox Zero, like I mentioned above, requires the discipline of regular review. You should be doing at least a weekly review that includes processing all — literally all — items in each inbox. This is made much easier if you also do a daily review to zero out inboxes at the start or end of each day. The end-of-day shutdown has become a welcome ritual for me, and sure, I don’t have an empty inbox when I start the next day, but I have done what I can do to keep things from piling up. If you consistently take small steps on a regular basis, I promise you it's not so bad.
Some people disagree with that last statement, so let’s look at objections.
Is Inbox Zero possible?
Some academics (and others) believe that Inbox Zero is impossible. For example, Chris Baile believes that Inbox Zero is dumb (because it’s impossible). Jocelyn Glei, author of Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done believes it is a “myth”. WIRED’s Natasha Bernal wrote that “it is impossible to keep on top of even the simplest of email inboxes without driving yourself completely insane”.
If you believe that Inbox Zero means having a near-constant state of nothing in your inboxes, I tend to agree with the doubters. The influx of messages and “stuff” is just too great, particularly today and especially in academia, to justify the work needed to pull this off.
But if you use the conception of “zero unintentional attention” as your basis, then Inbox Zero becomes not only possible, but well within the grasp of anybody reading this.
I don’t think it takes superhuman information processing skills or monastic levels of self-discipline to run inbox items through the Clarify process on a regular basis. I have neither, and yet I manage this all the time, and I am not alone. What it does take, is consistency and commitment — taking small steps within coherent systems — to build the habits needed to get to this state and stay there. It also requires a fair amount of giving yourself some slack if you mess up or fall off the wagon as you build those habits. Don’t discount this last point. It takes time and a willingness to learn from failure to make any improvements in life. Give yourself a little grace if you’re going to move in this direction.
Is Inbox Zero a good idea?
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Should already-overworked academics commit to devoting time and energy to get on top of their emails? My answer is yes — up to a point.
Maybe the main reason that this is a good idea comes from a concept in psychology called the Zeigarnik Effect. This refers to the phenomenon that we remember uncompleted tasks and goals better than we remember completed ones. In practical terms, it means that unfinished work carries cognitive load apart from our conscious attention to it. I believe we all feel this effect quite often in our everyday lives as academics: Intrusive thoughts stemming from incomplete tasks, unfulfilled goals, and — yes — unprocessed emails.
A single unprocessed email may or may not carry a large cognitive load. But multiplied over every unprocessed email that is sitting in our inboxes, it can become an almost unbearable burden. Soon, the very existence of unprocessed emails in your inbox can make it impossible to be fully present in the moment with the people and work that need your full attention. Our goal here is to have none of this.
I said that Inbox Zero is a good idea up to a point. Inbox Zero is not a good idea if you begin to obsess over it and make it some sort of purity test, like “I am more productive than my colleagues because I am at Inbox Zero”. It's also not a good idea if you make the metric a target. The goal of Inbox Zero is not simply to have nothing in your inbox — it's to allocate your time and attention properly. When the metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.
I believe that Inbox Zero is something we should strive for, but if it comes down to a choice between having your sanity and having Inbox Zero, always choose your sanity.
Finally, don't underestimate the quality of life improvements that you will experience when you are giving no unintentional attention to your emails. The ability to focus fully on your work and the people in your life and the things that you really value in your life, rather than being a servant to your email inbox and having your emails living rent-free in your head all day long, is like giving yourself 50 extra IQ points and losing 50 pounds all at once. It's hard work in the short term. It's incredibly freeing in the near and long term.
Etc.
Tools: I'm on sabbatical this semester working on a second edition of my 2017 book. That means I'm doing a lot of typing — so much in fact, that I was giving myself tendonitis in my wrists. I tried the built-in speech-to-text tool on my Mac, but wasn't impressed with its accuracy. Looking around for other speech-to-text software, I foundan app called VoiceInk. I used it this week to not only write the new material for my book, but also to write this article. It uses an AI engine to interpret speech and convert it to text, and it is highly accurate. According to the app, it has saved me almost three hours of typing, not to mention strain on my hands, in the last three days since I downloaded it. One thing I really like is that it's not a subscription service! It is a single one-time payment of $29 to own the app forever ($39 if you want two licenses). I deeply hope that other app makers will follow this lead.
Music: Drumeo, a YouTube channel dedicated to drummers,, runs a series in which they bring in a professional drummer, give them a song that they have never heard before with the drum track removed, and then the drummer works out their own drum part live in the studio and records it over the original track. Recently they published maybe my favorite one of these, with Will Hunt (from the hard rock band Evanescence) puts together a great version of Earth Wind & Fire’s 1979 classic “In The Stone”. A great example of pro-level musicianship, and how experts learn things in the moment!
I personally have five different email accounts, Google Keep, an inbox folder in two different Google Drive accounts, an inbox folder in a OneDrive account, two different physical in-trays, and I am probably forgetting a few more.
It took me three eight-hour days the first time I did it.